The Golden Scallop world premiere

One and a half years ago I was hired by Grandview Productions to DP a film called, The Golden Scallop. It's remained to be one of the best feature film sets I've worked on and has turned out to be one of the best features I've shot to date. The team at GVP were true professionals, logistically on-point, and creatively empowering.

What I found most interesting about shooting this film was the fact that it is a mocumentary. Typically, this style of shooting isn't indicative of my body of work, but after speaking with director, Joe Laraja, it was clear that he wanted the look to teeter on the edge where documentary meets classic narrative. Even when we were shooting docu style, we sometimes mixed it with more cinematic style lighting/framing. Joe and I spent much time discussing the cut and how scenes can blend from comedic, docu-style shooting with zooms and minimal cutting to classic narrative style shooting that employs shot-reverse-shot and even a dolly or two. This process was creatively challenging and a whole lot of fun to explore.

Fast forward to this week, I'm happy to share on its world premiere at the Newport Beach Film Festival in CA, The Golden Scallop has been awarded for Outstanding Achievement in Filmmaking. TGS receives this award amongst an impressive lineup of films. Newport Beach Film Festival is famous for premiering/presenting such films as Crash and 500 days of Summer. Needless to say, myself and the team at GVP are excited for the launch of its festival run. Below is a pic of the GVP teams Q&A following the 1st screening at NBFF.

You can watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/48929240. It was cut before color correction/grading but it's still a fun trailer and the actual feature looks great. I couldnt be happier with the end result. I encourage you to go see it if its screened in your city.